Superhero in the ER

For all his low-key laid-back evenness in everyday life, Ian nonetheless has quite the knack (through no real fault of his own) for requiring dramatic trips to the ER — twice now we’ve taken him, and both times away from home. The end of this day’s story is that he is perfectly okay now, and we don’t really have any answers as to what happened. But what follows is a brief account of the action for all who might be wondering, complete with how he charmed the socks off the staff.

Tuesday morning I loaded up the kids for a visit to my friend Kasey’s house in Plattsmouth (about an hour away from Lincoln). Ian slept all the way and was as far as I knew feeling fine when we got there. After about a half hour of playing nicely with the big kids, Ian came to tell me he was hungry. I thought little of it and told him we’d be eating in “just a little bit.” Maybe five minutes after that, he came and sat down on the couch with me and complained again that he was hungry.

Several minutes later, when I turned my full attention to him, I realized that something was quite wrong. He was sweating buckets — his hair was wet probably an inch back from the hairline — he was slurring his words and seemed out of it, and he was limp. Kasey — a mother of four, herself all-too-well acquainted with medical emergencies — was as alarmed as I was and told me to take him immediately to the clinic in town. I was completely panicky and didn’t understand her directions the first time. We said a quick prayer out loud, and then I had to ask her to repeat all that she had told me. I loaded Ian up, left Simon and Clara with Kasey, and made a frantic call to Jason on the way.

Kasey had called ahead to her pediatrician’s office, and they were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to do any helpful tests and suggested we go directly to the ER at Children’s Hospital in Omaha, so that’s what we did. In the meantime, Ian continued to whimper that he was hungry, and he kept falling asleep, or trying to.

My dad works in Omaha, and I called to ask him to meet us at the hospital. He, of course, agreed, and I think he was less confused when I finally remembered to explain that I was heading to Children’s in Omaha, not in Lincoln. We met at the door, and even though Ian was once again awake, he was still so out of it that he didn’t even greet Papa (so very unusual). Dad said he was just like a limp rag snuggling on his shoulder.

The rest of the story is a whole lot of waiting — almost six hours in all. Although I began to suspect that he would feel considerably better if he could eat, Ian did start to seem more himself after about an hour or so. They let him drink water, but they didn’t want him to have any food until after they had done a blood draw. Most of the time he was simply clingy and weepy (the way you’d expect a sick kid to be), but at one point he was so hungry that he was actually laying on the floor crying. This was not an unwarranted tantrum, in my opinion.

Finally, after the first “poke,” as Ian calls them, he was allowed to eat, and the child made short work of almost an entire sleeve of saltine crackers and a ham sandwich from the cafeteria. His blood work (more waiting) showed that his blood sugar was low (I don’t think they ever told me the number) and that he was dehydrated. With no real reason for either condition — he had eaten a normal breakfast, had been eating and drinking normally, and had not been sick — everyone was rather stumped. We waited again after he had finished eating for more observation and eventually another blood draw.

When the resident came in to let us know that they were going to take more blood and then, depending on the results, send us home, he asked if I had any questions. I didn’t, but I could tell Ian had a question. He sweetly but boldly asked the doctor, “Another poke? Do you mean for me or for some other little boy?” He was understandably disappointed by the answer.

Later, as we were waiting for our discharge papers, a nurse and two students came in to take a last set of vitals, and they asked Ian what his favorite (stuffed) animal was. He said, “camel,” which must have been one they hadn’t heard before because they all laughed. They said they’d try to find a camel, but they asked him what other animals he might like too.

He ended up with a giraffe — “my favorite is a camel AND a giraffe,” he affably explained — that he named Clara. At one point he told me this was a “he-Clara,” but I think he changed his mind and “actually it’s a she-Clara.” When we were finally released, he strolled out of the ER sporting his superhero cape and “tough-guy camouflage band-aids,” clutching his new giraffe, and still holding a few saltines. He thanked the nurses at their stations and told them to have a great day (one by one; it took us a long time to get out of the building).

The second blood draw indicated that his blood sugar was actually high — higher than they would have expected it to be from eating a meal but apparently not so high that they would have kept us overnight. We will follow up with our doctor, but it may be hard to figure out what was going on. If it never happens again (our hope, of course), we may never know.

Besides the ginormous relief that the little guy seems to be okay and the great amount of gratitude I feel for all who helped and prayed and called and texted throughout the day and the extreme tiredness I felt when the adrenaline finally wore off, the other emotion I had was huge disappointment that we didn’t get to spend the day with Kasey after all. If there ever was a true friend, it is Kasey, and I’m a little jealous that Simon and Clara got to hang out there all day.